Serco wins £32m Cornwall OOH contract

COMMERCIAL: NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly has awarded Serco a five year contract for the provision of out of hours services worth £32m.

The OOH service provides for more than half a million people and receives 145,000 calls each year.

The new contract will deliver improved out-of-hours access for patients through the appointment-based GP clinics. These clinics, run from 10 locations across the county and accessed via the Serco call centre, will co-ordinate their opening times across evenings and weekends so that patients should be within 30 minutes travel time of a GP.

“I am delighted, following a robust procurement process involving local GP colleagues, that Serco will deliver the service over the next five years; patients can feel confident that Cornwall will continue to have high quality out-of-hours GP services.”

The manager overseeing outsourcing giant Serco’s contract to provide community services across Suffolk has told HSJ its three year deal was ‘not long enough’ to carry out the level of transformation needed in the region.

COMMERCIAL: Monitor has provisionally rejected a private sector provider’s complaint that a south west primary care trust breached competition rules - but criticised the commissioner’s lack of transparency.